Volker Schlöndorff is a German director born in Wiesbaden, one of the leading figures of the New German Cinema movement of the 1970s. The Tin Drum, adapting Günter Grass's novel of a boy who refuses to grow amid the rise of Nazism, won both the Palme d'Or and the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, becoming the defining international success of the movement. The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum, co-directed with Margarethe von Trotta, examined media persecution and state surveillance with pointed contemporary relevance. Death of a Salesman and The Handmaid's Tale, both English-language literary adaptations, showed his range into American and international production. Schlöndorff's ability to combine formally ambitious German art cinema with internationally accessible literary adaptation made him one of the most commercially successful directors to emerge from the New German Cinema movement. Read more